Kevin Bronson on February 9th, 2018

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“Ace’s High” is singer-songwriter Esbie Fonte’s “9 to 5,” a meditation on what lies beyond the mind-numbing tedium of an office job and the helpless feeling of being stuck in a merciless present. Or, as the songwriter puts it, “getting by on tomorrow.”

Fonte, born to a Peruvian and Italian family, was reared in the Bay Area, soaking up musical knowledge from her multi-instrumentalist father. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, spent a year in England studying music production and ended up in L.A., working a day job and dreaming of bigger things, which are beginning to happen. Recalling folk-pop of the Corrs and Natalie Merchant, her new single is a collaboration with Peter Tilley. “I am surrounded by those / of you who drop like flies / and I, I didn’t even know / those of you who will go, fools,” she sings, chewing her words like a bored teenager chews gum but simmering with the resolve that she will be one who sees her dreams to the end.

||| Stream: “Ace’s High”